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The Gardens and the Coffee House

The Quirinale Palace complex encloses a four-hectare garden whose history is closely associated with the evolution of the monumental compound.

At the beginning of the 16th Century, among Patrician villas and the residences of cardinals, the Quirinale Hill also hosted the villa of the aristocratic Carafa family called “Vigna di Napoli” (“The Vineyard of Naples”). The villa comprised two residential buildings, respectively located on the foothills in the north and, in the south, on the Strada Pia, the modern-day Via del Quirinale. The buildings were linked by gardens, arboured walks and courtyards, but separated by the enclosing wall of the garden proper, which stretched over the eastern portion of the estate.

The first to landscape the garden was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este after he rented the Carafa’s villa in 1550, transforming it into one of Rome’s most elegant dwellings, full of antique collections. At the time the garden, which was designed by Girolamo da Carpi and Tommaso Ghinucci, was organized into roads, pavilions and flower beds, and was accessed by a main entrance road running parallel to the Strada Pia. The main road fanned out into a trident converging towards a central pavilion with a nymphaeum surrounded by ancient statues and another central plan pavilion in wood and foliage, located in the place where the 18th Century Coffee House would later be built. A staircase descended to the lower portion of the compound, in the direction of the Trevi district, called the “lower garden”, which hosted a nymphaeum decorated with statues of Apollo and the Muses, the so-called “Large Fountain”, built during under the reign of Ippolito d’Este and which, at the end of the 16th Century, was transformed into the Organ Fountain (photo) that still stands today.

Gregory XIII, born Ugo Boncompagni (1572-1585), started the construction of the papal palace but left the arrangement of the garden unchanged. His successor, Sixtus V, born Felice Peretti (1585-1590), installed the waterworks to bring water to the fountains after he ordered the construction of the Acquedotto Felice.

The garden resumed an important role under Pope Clement VIII, born Ippolito Aldobrandini (1592-1605), when he decided to restore some of the fountains created by Ippolito d’Este and commissioned the construction of the monumental Organ Fountain (print), famous for the musical mechanism that was operated by the fall of water and for the wealth of its decorations. Some of the chronicles of the time reported that the pope would “receive ambassadors and other dignitaries” in the garden.

At the beginning of the 17th Century, Paul V, born Camillo Borghese (1605-1621), albeit respecting the previous arrangement, radically transformed the garden into a perfect monumental design while Pope Urban VIII, born Maffeo Barberini (1623-1644), extended it towards the Quattro Fontane (Four Fountains), including therein the former Vigna Boccacci (Vineyard), which had been left uncultivated on the edge of the estate, and flattening out and building a wall around the top of the hill, the collis salutaris of ancient times.

During the 18th Century, Pope Benedict XIV, born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini (1740-1758), had the most panoramic spot of the garden embellished with an elegant Coffee House, whose construction was begun in 1741 by architect Ferdinando Fuga and which the pope destined to become a place for cultural encounters. The building, which consisted of a three- arched portico along the two façades, flanked by two parallel wings, which dovetailed into the front terrace with a white and pink peperino stone diamond-shaped flooring and three steps to access it. The linear architectural design is highlighted by the Doric frieze on the façade, which is crowned by the cornice supporting twelve toga-donning busts. The posterior façade, which overlooks the city, has a niche containing the bust of the Pope. The magnificent view, once a unique attraction for visitors, is now compromised by the large building of the Stables, which the Savoy sovereigns had built in 1875.

The sober linearity of the exterior is in contrast with the refined elegance of the interior halls, whose decoration was completed in 1743. The central loggia, now closed by window panes, is a see-through connection with the garden and gives access to the rooms inside: the parlour on the right is characterised by a vaulted ceiling decorated with elegant stuccos encircling four oval paintings of the Evangelists (1742) by Pompeo Batoni, who also authored the painting in the centre of the vault portraying the Delivery of the Keys. The walls are decorated with large paintings – the Woman of Canaan at the Feet of Christ and The Good Samaritan by Jan Frans van Bloemen, nicknamed Orizzonte, and by Placido Costanzi – respectively known for their landscapes and figures, which elegantly hang over the fireplace. The parlour on the left features a similar stucco decoration and paintings of great artistic value: Christ Entrusts his Flock to Peter, at the centre of the vault, and the Four Prophets by Agostino Masucci. Of great value are also the two paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini hanging on the two longer walls and representing Piazza del Quirinale (1733) and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore (1742). The Coffee House was the setting for the encounter between Benedict XIV and Charles of Bourbon, King of The Two Sicilies, on 3 November 1744, which was depicted by Panini in a famous painting displayed at Naples’ Capodimonte Museum.

During the reign of Gregory XVI, born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari (1831-1846), the arrangement of the trees was thoroughly reorganized, especially in the portion of the garden towards the Four Fountains, in the vogue of English gardens. Of particular significance was the creation, near the Palace’s eastern wing, of a garden labyrinth with an obelisk at the centre and the installation, along the walk from the Manica Lunga (Long Wing) to Porta Giardini, of an elegant fountain with an upper marble cup and a lower circular basin, designed by architect Filippo Martinucci.

During the reign of the House of Savoy, interventions included the creation of the Caserta Fountain, designed for King Umberto I (1878-1900) by sculptor Giulio Monteverde and built in front of the Coffee House. It features a sculptural group from the park of the Reggia di Caserta, with three female figures sitting on a rock in the middle of a circular basin.